


das kann uns keiner nehmen

by madanach



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Euro 2016, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madanach/pseuds/madanach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The fuck do we do, Poldi?” Basti says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	das kann uns keiner nehmen

“I feel numb,” Basti says to him, in the darkening night. A lamp’s filtering its weak light out onto the balcony but it doesn’t do more than illuminate the side of his knee, all taped up, and the back of his ear, the rest left to the blue-black sky. Sundown in Marseilles. 

Lukas doesn’t know what to say, to him or to anyone. The younger kids who were red from crying after the whistle; Jerome, Mes, Manu and the others who know loss already, who he knows feel useless and dumb. Everywhere there’s wives and girlfriends with quiet consolations, children who don’t care about the score because their daddy’s on the field, parents who will say something reasonable like, _Remember Brazil? Things will get better._

It’s too dark. Someone on his Twitter feed used the word “disappoint” after the scoreline and it’s more or less like getting stabbed in the chest. Basti’s nursing a beer and has been trying not to cry for a while.

He’s got a baby daughter at home. They made it to the semi-final. Portugal wouldn’t have been that good of a game anyway.

“The fuck do we do, Poldi?” Basti says.

Like everything he does when he’s hurt, the old nickname is intentional. There’s a child somewhere inside him that he’s gotten very good at hiding, the part whose instinct is to scream and rage at God and the world and injustice. He put it away like he did all other childish things, but it comes out in the aftermath of losses and whenever Lukas calls him _Schweini_ back.

Someone yells Thomas’ name below them. He can see the lights of the pool and middling figures around it, a few swimming, most sitting in pairs of two or alone. A splash, and someone sinks to the bottom. Lukas smiles.

“What do you want to do?” he asks Basti, because he’s never been good at answering questions.

“Turn back time,” Basti says. “Play better. Be nineteen again.”

“No, you don’t,” Lukas says, and lets Basti shake his head at him. _Anything to never feel this way again_ , Basti is thinking, like he has in every locker room after every loss he didn’t think he deserved, and then he got up the next day and did it again, because every win is a chance to prove that feeling wrong.

Being nineteen sucked. Everything people said stung too fresh. He didn’t have Louis yet. Losses sent him into a temper, and he couldn’t talk to his coach without being treated like a kid. He had potential, just like Basti, and that was it. Now they’ve got a World Cup, and lives, and some sort of legacy.

“I’m tired of the bench,” Lukas says. Basti looks at him and reaches over with his half-drunk beer to tap a knuckle against Lukas’ wrist.

“I’m tired of injury,” Basti says, like an admission of guilt. 

“I’m tired of bad referees.”

“I’m tired of fucking penalties.”

Lukas laughs, startled, and Basti joins in after a moment. It’s ridiculous. It _feels_ ridiculous, to be sitting here laughing while staring at the biggest unknown in their lives. 

They both cried in 2006, out of anger and embarrassment and adolescent frustration. Since then, he can count the times he’s shed tears for football on one hand. It made him feel more in control to put his head down and stop thinking for a while, shake hands, answer simple questions, text his father and Moni and tell them that he was fine. If it sinks in over days instead of hours there’s less collateral damage.

When Bayern got pushed down to the UEFA Cup in 2007 Basti hit the wall of the tunnel so hard he almost broke his hand. The next day he told a medical assistant that he fell. 

Now he sits up, sets his beer on the side table, says, “Hey, Lukas.”

“Yeah?”

“Sit up.”

Lukas does, swinging his legs over the side of the chair. His knees knock against Basti’s. In the pool, down in the dark, someone laughs.

“We did okay,” Basti says. “We did good.”

“We were the best in the world,” Lukas tells him.

Basti smiles, so Lukas kisses him. 

He used to think he’d remember every time Basti touched him, on the pitch or off, hoarded moments like a child with a crush without accepting that that’s what he was. Life continued to grind on, time took its toll, and he knows better, now.

“It was worth it,” Basti says quietly, eyes closed, against the corner of his mouth. A bit sad, but steady.

Out of all of it, Lukas hopes he remembers this.

**Author's Note:**

> die stadt wird hell und wir trinken auf's [leben](http://67.media.tumblr.com/015b82970bcc8271789ee618edb79ff1/tumblr_inline_nbyo89DbKQ1s3a3r2.png)
> 
> [tumblr](http://madanach.tumblr.com)


End file.
